The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, January 16, 2004, Page 4, Image 4
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RECENT SURPRISE FOOD SAFETY INSPECTION
1
In.Our.Qpinion
Public needs
safe eateries
Beezer’s recent poor rating on a surprise state
DHEC inspection is not a surprise considering the
deep cuts in the state budget over the past year. While
it is of concern that a popular local eatery received
such a low score, Beezer’s corrected its mistakes and
no harm was done.
Indeed, Beezer’s is not alone in receiving a low
rating, and of greater concern are the other
restaurants surrounding USC who have not had
surprise inspections within the past year from the
Department of Health and Environmental Control. If
the public cannot enter an
It shouldn’t take a eatery with the expectation
low C rating to that the food they eat is
emphasize the prepare(} jn a manner that
importance of meets
minimum safety
DHEC inspections. standards restaurants wm
suffer.
This is unfortunate, as the underlying problems are
the vacancies in DHEC’s Division of Food Protection,
in part because of deep cuts in the funding of state
agencies like DHEC last year.
Gov. Sanford alone is not to blame for the current
state of affairs in the General Assembly, as he
inherited a budget deficit of around $300 million last
year from the previous administration. Every major
state agency has seen its budget cut significantly in an
attempt to make up for the shortfall in cash, but what
is worrisome is that divisions like food protection, the
Highway Patrol and the Mental Health Department
cannot maintain essential services.
USC administrators have rightly complained about
reductions in funding that have contributed to tuition
increases, but even these issues pale in comparison to
the implications of food safety lapses like those that
occurred across the street from the Horseshoe.
It shouldn’t take a “C” rating to emphasize the
importance of these inspections. Instead of putting
money into their pet projects, South Carolina’s
legislators must put the public’s interest first and
ensure that agencies that protect the citizenry receive
all the support they need to carry out their critical
missions. Anything less is negligent.
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CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS
N-E-R-D with a capital ‘S’
Recently, I’ve come across a
brilliant game that is not only
time-consuming but also in
creases your intelligence as you
play. If you’re thinking Quarters,
you’re wrong.
It’s
Scrabble. It’s
addictive, it’s
thought pro
voking and it’s
really freaking
nerdy. I hate to
admit it, but I
came back to DAVID STAGG
school this Third-year
past weekend, media arts
„ , „ student
and on a
Saturday night
when everyone was out wreak
ing havoc on the unsuspecting
Southern bar owners, I was
Wreaking havoc on some wicked
word scores.
That’s OK — I’m comfortable
with my nerdiness. Not to say
that you ARE a nerd simply be
cause you play Scrabble.
No, you’re a nerd because you
have the officially licensed
Scrabble dictionary and can score
over 300 points in a game and can
quote any line from any of the
“Friends” seasons and have an IQ
over 150 and wear your pants
above your navel and have a tat
too of Stephen Hawking’s signa
ture above your left nipple and
frequently caress it as if it were
a genie’s lamp so that he will one
day pop out and grant you three
nerdy wishes like, “I wish that
thermal radiation was at a lower
temperature than a black hole so
that the loss of entropy down the
black hole would make it possi
ble to have it greater than the in
crease of the horizon area.”
Well, I won’t settle for that.
Nothing can get out of a non-ro
tating black hole.
If you consider yourself a
nerdy Scrabble player, I’m here
to help you out with becoming a
cool Scrabble player. I have come
up with a couple variations on
the game to help you out:
♦ Variation #1—Strip Scrabble
Every time a score over 10 is
played, the other players take off
an article of clothing. This works
wonderfully when playing with
people you are attracted to, but
let’s be honest — only a certain
type of people play Scrabble. I am
one of them. I know that you
would not want to play this game
with me; otherwise, you’ll leave
swearing you saw a ghost.
♦ Variation #2 — Scrabb-hole
The game begins as normal,
but with each consecutive play,
the new player must better the
score of the person before them,
otherwise they have to drink.
Play repeats as much as needed
until everyone is sauced. At this
point, the game becomes Strip
Scrabble, then That’s Not a
(Expletive) Word, then Your
Mother, then Your Worst
Nightmare and eventually the
game is tossed out the window in
favor of one of the more common
past times of Americans: the
Drunken Brawl.
WARNING: As with Variation
#2, I’m aware that some people
cannot control their emotions
when they are inebriated. This
brings up an important question:
Should Pete Rose be allowed into
the Hall of Fame despite his ad
mitting to placing wagers on
baseball games?
No, seriously, Scrabble is a
very intense game that can cause
many disputes. More often than
not, the game ends in a career
ending brawl whether alcohol is
involved or not.
Little known fact—Achilles’ .
tendon wasn’t hurt in war. He
just lost his emotions over a heat
ed Scrabble game. Please exer
cise caution when playing. I ad
vise kneepads and a helmet at all
times when in front of the board.
In.Your.upinion
Review leaves ‘Big
Fish’ underrated
This letter is in response to
Gabrielle Sinclair’s article, ‘“Big
Fish’ sinks amid a sea of story
lines.”
While director Tim Burton did
choose to both introduce us to the
colorful stories a father believed
to be his life and show us how a
son came to terms with his fa
ther’s fictitious storytelling habits,
I don’t believe he failed at either.
The point of half of this movie,
the stories, was not to be believ
able. They weren’t believable sto
ries but exaggerations created by
a man to make his memories of a
life that actually happened more
interesting. His stories are unbe
lievable and meant to be. They
are all the tall tale cliches we’ve
ever heard wrapped up into one
life. The fact that we get to sit in a
theater and watch them played
out on film is just magical. It calls
out to the cravings for adventure
and romance in all those who
maintain them.
This movie has little to do with
“Forrest Gump,” except for the
fact that the movie about his life
never admits to the fact that he
was telling stories. Forrest’s sto
ries were more original and
thereby more believable. Forrest
could die, but he won’t. How
many movies kill off the main
character before the end? The
fact that young Edward Bloom
can’t die doesn’t detract from his
validity as a character. He
doesn’t know his life’s purpose;
it is constantly changing
throughout the movie. He wants
to be big, to find some place big
enough for him, to marry his
wife, to help people, and eventu
ally he wants to have an ending
that will rival the rest of his life’s
stories.
Edward Bloom’s character
continues to be valid as that in
teresting old man who tells sto
ries that everyone knows aren’t
true. “When I was a boy...”
All of us have at least a little
piece of unbelievable that we like
to make public, and our friends
and family usually accept it with
a grain of salt.
His son feels he doesn’t know
his father (how many of you re
ally know your father?) and like
we all do at one time or another,
he gets a bit upset at his father.
He doesn’t realize until the end
that he has known his father all
along. The stories are who his fa
ther is, because they are what he
passes on. People will remember
his stories, even though they may
not have bothered to remember
the facts of his actual life.
While I admit that each half of
this story seems quite unoriginal,
if not (in the words of my hus
band) cheesy or cliche, it is the
fact that they have been put to
gether that makes it a good (not
great) movie.
BRANDY GLETT
GRADUATE STUDENT IN MARINE
SCIENCE
Copter needs to
research St. Paul
If Peter Copter (“St. Paul had a
chip on his shoulder,” Monday)
had done some more research, he
would know that it was a Roman
commander who saved the
Apostle Paul from being stoned to
death by an angry mob.
Paul had no reason to hate the
Romans at the time he wrote his
letter to them. In fact, he spoke fa
vorably about the Roman regime.
For example: “The authorities
that exist have been established
by God” (Romans 13:1). The only
book in the Bible that suggests
Christian opposition to the
Roman government is Revelation,
which was written much later
than Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Jesus spoke against ritual no
tions of uncleanliness. He focused
instead on the uncleanliness that
comes from the heart (Mark 7:20)
and is exhibited through one’s ac
tions. Therefore, the Apostle Paul
was justified in warning the
Roman Christians not to conform
to the culture of sensuality in
which they were living.
ADAM CARTER
FIRST-YEAR GERMAN STUDENT
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Online.PoIl Does Saddam’s capture change the way you feel about Iraq?
Yes 16% No 39% Where’s bin Laden? 45%
“Yes, because it
brings closure to the
situation.'"'
ANDRE DAVIS
FOURTH-YEAR CHEMISTRY STUDENT.
No, it does not
justify the initial
reason for going in
Iraq.”
ERICA BELL
DOCTORAL NURSING STUDENT.
Yes, because It
proved my stance
on the war [was
correct]”
AMELIA BOGART
FIFTH- YEAR BIOLfLBY STUDENT. ,
:ROM WWW.DAILYQAMECOCK.COM
Try the
checkout
line for
real news
I’m on a quest to make the
world aware of one David Bulger.
He is the single-most important
American journalist of the past 20
years. While conventional media
personalities reported the fall of
the Berlin Wall and September 11
in splashy, full-color TV specials,
Bulger worked in the trenches of
a much-maligned black-and-white
publication digging the real dirt.
David Bulger is a senior re
porter for Weekly World News, the
□ Florida-based
newspaper with
the sheer ambi
tion and guts to
report the sto
ries that matter.
Last sum
mer, as I went
STEVEN VAN g™cery shop
HAREN pmg wlth
_ , mom each
mechanical week, I proudly
engineering bought a copy of
student Bulger’s respec
tive publication
and slapped it down on the con
veyor belt. I couldn’t tell if the
looks of disgust I got from several
cashiers were aimed at Bulger’s
controversial front-page stories or
the cans of discount Diet Pepsi
Vanilla I was secretly hoarding.
How has Bulger, a beacon of
hope in a quagmire of partisan me
dia types, gone unnoticed for so
long? It seems that since the mid
1990s, Bat Boy has been gobbling
all of his attention.
Who else delivered a compre
hensive report on Spontaneous
Nerd Combustion (SNC)? Where
was CNN when Bulger dropped the
“Abraham Lincoln was a woman”
bombshell? When the world wasn’t
looking, he single-handedly dis
covered Saddam’s weapons of
mass destruction: prehistoric di
nosaurs.
If 1U1 UUC, cull wuuagcu. ucu-gci o
tips to prevent SNC saved me, the
nerd king of USC. The usual sus
pects — Bill O’Reilly, Larry King,
that Martin Bashir guy—all came
up empty. They’ve even missed
stories from such booming
metropolises as Hobart, Ind., and
Bochum, Germany. Inexcusable!
Lately, however, Bulger has re
sorted to sensationalized shams
and contests to win over a new,
youthful readership. Everyone
knows that a genuine Bigfoot sa
■fari costs at least $2,000, but WWN
is offering the same Pacific
Northwest excursion for $800, mi
nus the cost of buckshot. To my
knowledge, this is the first time
anyone from the WWN staff has
resorted to such cheap tactics to
sell papers.
Bulger and the rest of the staff
deserve our thanks—not for pro
ducing overbearingly serious
sludge but for giving us some
thing to laugh at. Weekly World
News is genius in grayscale. If
you don’t find it funny, then your
sense of humor isn’t worth the
cheap sandwich wrapping that |
WWN is printed on.
. omug oi-jL.0 casniers wm al
ways giggle fiendishly at dedicated
readers like me, but oh, the trea
sures they’ve already missed out
on: a “Get Out of Hell Free” card,
extensive coverage of that Spanish
galleon orbiting Mars, a tasteful
featurette on giant slugs and all the
life-affirming celebrity garbage
you could ever need.
We should band together be
hind Mr. Bulger, Let’s find the
currently MIA Pope John Paul II,
get Bat Boy’s teeth filed and raise
money for Hillary Clinton’s bas
tard alien child. I’m even taking
Bulger’s advice on how to help
America’s sluggish economy —
I’m suing myself for a tidy prof
it. God bless you, David Bulger.
Keep looking for the truth about
all of our potential cross-dress
ing presidents.